Posted on by Brendan Birth

My Final Coronavirus Update From New York City (For Now, and Hopefully Forever): June 25, 2020

First of all, I want to apologize to my readers for a late post this evening. I was working a meeting related to where I work, and that meeting ended literally right before I started typing this. Hence, the delay in writing and publishing this post.

I should address the elephant in the room: the title of tonight’s post. I was thinking that I would continue these weekly update posts until we got to about mid-July, which would be a month or so into the reopening process in New York City. I wanted to wait to wind down this series until mid-July because I wanted to see whether the reopening process went safely in the city first. I said all of this in a post about a month ago.

However, a lot has changed in the past month.

Namely, there are now major hotspots emerging in states like Alabama, California, Washington, Florida, and Texas. In contrast, my home state, once the epicenter of the virus, is now one of only four states on track to contain the virus.[1]

This weekly update was created so that readers could get insight into what it was like to be living in a hotspot of this horrid pandemic. However, we are most certainly not a hotspot in New York–in fact, we’re likely one of the safest places to be in right now, from a COVID-19 standpoint. Given how much the situation is under control here, I’ve concluded that these weekly updates have run their course.

This is not to say that the pandemic is over, by any means. Far from it. The end of this series just means that the pandemic is under control enough in my area, at least for the time being, that I didn’t feel it was right to continue these weekly updates. Of course, if the dreaded second wave comes to New York, I would resume my weekly updates. I sincerely hope we don’t have a second wave, though.

Nor should anyone interpret the end of this series as a sign to stop practicing the mask-wearing and the social distancing, even if you live in New York. In fact, this series would be continuing for many weeks to come if not for the fact that so many New Yorkers were on board with wearing their masks and social distancing.

I want to thank all of you, my readers, for being a part of this journey by liking, commenting, and sharing these posts. It has been a wild and at times trying journey, but a journey that I am thankful to have survived in good health, and a journey that I’m glad I documented.

[1] https://covidactnow.org/state/NY?s=56971

12 Replies to “My Final Coronavirus Update From New York City (For Now, and Hopefully Forever): June 25, 2020”

  1. Thanks for sharing. One of the biggest things during the current pandemic is people with disabilities. There were times that gotten left behind. My Friend here is the writer. I am writing this comment to bring awareness to people who do not know. PA is the place where I live. I work as a support system for young individuals all the way to the day they graduate high school. I support people with Autism on a wide range of scale and abilities.
    Governor Tom Wolf is and always be a big supporter of services that support people with disabilities who have productive lives. please do not tell me otherwise by Governor Tom Wolf. I might be wrong about this. I am sorry if I am wrong on the numbers. Where I work at we got 15 billion dollars from the government. Right, Now I am not sure how much money was given by Governor Tom wolf.

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    1. Thanks for commenting, Joe.

      One of the tricky things with COVID is the fact that it affects people with certain conditions and disabilities the most (thinking of the immunocompromised, for example). And, at the same time, many states (including PA, I think) are facing large budget deficits, often looking to cut services for, among others, the vulnerable among us during this time.

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    1. It is great news (what’s happening in New York). I still think we took a bit too long to respond, but once we did, we responded swiftly. We have bent the curve downwards, and now we are in the midst of what appears to be a slow and safe reopening. We have been through some trying times, but I hope that others can learn from what we’ve been through here in New York.

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  4. I also hope that it is the last update you will need, Brendan. Many thanks for your interesting and informative posts that have told us so much about the NYC area during this.
    Best wishes, Pete.

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  5. Being from Massachusetts who has been listed as the state with the lowest transmission rate makes me feel a bit better that people are being responsible. There was a time when we were in the top 3 states in cases. I am leery of people traveling from other states that are hotspots.

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  6. Thanks so much for this documentation. I am fortunate to live in possibly the safest state except for Hawai’i in which the Republican governor with whom I disagree on everything decided to outspokenly defy Trump for the sake of the health of the citizens. Weird, weird New Hampshire. But it is a place from which many elders retire to Florida and that situation is just terrifying.

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    1. You’re welcome, Maren. You are very fortunate to be where you are (New Hampshire, I think), with a governor who from the sound of things has handled this well. I disagree with Cuomo on a lot of things (including cuts to education, which I wrote about last Monday), but when the situation got bad, he acted swiftly and acted in ways that helped us get on the road to containment.

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